The latest so called "stable version". These are not done anymore because it's simply too much hassle to prepare them.

Nowadays you basically have two good choices:

1. 7609 like you have downloaded but use one of Sevenfm's experimental exes which are based on 7609. He does a fantastic job at improving the AI (check out his gameplay videos) and he also incorporates bug fixes from the development trunk into the old 7609 build. Version 7609 is still needed for some mods.

2. The current development version which can be downloaded here. This has all the new features and bug fixes. Some mods are compatible with it or if you don't plan to use mods you can safely try out this build.

If you plan to use mods always check out which game version is required. The mod description should have that info.

Boge
It's best to play NCTH with mods - SDO (NCTH Overhaul), AFS, Aimnas.
Experienced players usually tweak cthconstants.ini to make shooting more enjoyable.

Here is an example of my NCTH minimod - tweaked cthconstants.ini and weapons.xml (handling values changed). You can use it or at least test it and see the difference with the stock 1.13. (put it into your game profile)

As for my settings:
NORMAL_SHOOTING_DISTANCE = 200
IRON_SIGHT_PERFORMANCE_BONUS = 35.0 (the optimal value may be from 15 to 50, though even 35 is a lot)
DEGREES_MAXIMUM_APERTURE = 12
SCOPE_RANGE_MULTIPLIER = 0.4

To make scopes more useful at less than optimal range
AIM_TOO_CLOSE_SCOPE = -2.0

Increased bullet deviation makes gun range more important - you cannot hit small targets (heads) reliably with a short range pistol, even with a sniper scope on it =)
MAX_BULLET_DEV = 10.0

I also increase movement penalty, because at low values it doesn't affect shooting much
MOVEMENT_PENALTY_PER_TILE = 4.0

Seven could you upload the file again? Or at least upload the cthconstant.ini and weapons.xml. Havve you changed the range of pistol? Its ridiculous, and can compete with SMGs, so enemies can just rush one turn and then outshoot you with their pistols...

Seven could you upload the file again? Or at least upload the cthconstant.ini and weapons.xml. Havve you changed the range of pistol? Its ridiculous, and can compete with SMGs, so enemies can just rush one turn and then outshoot you with their pistols...

I play both, and often change during a running campaign
when the actual cth system gets boring or i am too disappointed by the results as both have their flaws.
Thats done by flipping the byte at offset C06338h in ram from 00h to 01h,
without any recognizeable issues in the game,
which brings me to the main reason for this message, my question:

Why has the Ncth/Octh switch been moved from the options that are accessable during gameplay
(as it still was e.g. in 4870, btw is its number just a coincidence? as we start at tile 4870)
to a spot where a hack is required to switch on the fly,
this forces most players to drop a campaign when they are not satisfied with their cth selection.

The switch was removed just like many other experimental switches because it wasn't needed anymore. NCTH isn't experimental anymore. It works fine and if some player doesn't like its default settings he can always change them.

The switch was removed just like many other experimental switches because it wasn't needed anymore. NCTH isn't experimental anymore. It works fine and if some player doesn't like its default settings he can always change them.

I agree with your statement but cant recognize an answer to my question
why was it moved to a spot where it is accesable only on start of a new game?

There are reasons to switch cth amd other start options:

In my actual campaign with experimental exe, shooting at moving targets with octh appears broken,
i am glad to continue the campaign with ncth which i might have ended otherwise.

Some Guy on YT played an IM campaign and repeatedly got iirc freezes(or some other gamebraking stuff) in combat
so he was glad to do the ram hack and continue the LP.

In my actual campaign with experimental exe, shooting at moving targets with octh appears broken,
i am glad to continue the campaign with ncth which i might have ended otherwise.

Something is not broken just because you didn't read the feature description before playing something experimental.
Also, you can disable OCTH improvements any time with option which was also mentioned in feature description.
Anyway, I agree that if switching between OCTH/NCTH is possible without any bugs, there's no reason to disable it.

I agree with your statement but cant recognize an answer to my question
why was it moved to a spot where it is accesable only on start of a new game?

It was never intended to be switchable during a campaign as far as I remember. That's why it's in the start options and not the Ini or game options. The experimental switch was only there during testing so if players would experience severe bugs they can at least continue their game. Most players cannot compile their own exe so they would have had to wait for a new release.
Another reason for the switch was to quickly compare results with OCTH in order to balance NCTH.

In general I don't see much reason to switch the systems during a campaign except for cheating maybe.

Playing Arulco Revisited 1.4 mod with NCTH is absolutely abysmal suckage. Rather than being able to switch in the options menu I risked breaking the game by reverting to OCTH via INI editor.

It seems depending on which mod and what 1.13 version of NCTH is being played- makes a tremendous difference between "enjoyable playability" and total shitshow of a game.

With Arul Revisited 1.4 (an older version of NCTH) at its most stable 7609 release, it felt unplayable using NCTH. While playing both Arul Vacations 1.8 and Urban Chaos 4.5 NCTH seemed great. I'm guessing other peoples experiences vary with tastes and versions/mods being played. But I can certainly affirm NCTH varies wildly in playability and enjoyment based on its build. So essentially disabling the option to switch between OCTH/NCTH in the preferences can be a game breaker playing older mods.

With Arul Revisited 1.4 (an older version of NCTH) at its most stable 7609 release, it felt unplayable using NCTH. While playing both Arul Vacations 1.8 and Urban Chaos 4.5 NCTH seemed great. I'm guessing other peoples experiences vary with tastes and versions/mods being played. But I can certainly affirm NCTH varies wildly in playability and enjoyment based on its build. So essentially disabling the option to switch between OCTH/NCTH in the preferences can be a game breaker playing older mods.

On the other hand, I'm right now in early phase (32 progress) of a playthrough with the latest AFS (so much like 4.5 Urban Chaos), and honestly I'm bored to death. My sniper IMP got some .30car starting rifle and with sig sight bought from Tony on day 1 he so far hits 70% of headshots from max range. Got him M1 carbine with no32 4x scope recently, and now he does it even outside of range (literally the moment anyone enters the visual range of 4x scope, it's bullet to the head time, even though it is kinda outside of rifle range by some margin). Everyone else is completely useless, Ira spots for him, everybody else is here just to make some noise and discourage enemies from approaching him. It's even more OCTH than OCTH but it is horrible NCTH it is like if you read the idea of NCTH and then do it completely the other way round

And that is perfectly fine. The whole point of a modable project like this is that everyone can adjust the game to his taste. But the whole idea of NCTH was to move away from that kind of super gamey gameplay. For some weird reason, in reality, modern armies don't just throw away their assault rifles and equip everybody with WW1 bolt action rifles and go around headshotting everyone. Instead, NCTH tries to be more "realistic", making volume of fire more important and strictly better than super precise single shots. Just like it has been in real life for quite some time. It wasn't always super succesful at that, but newer versions do it pretty fine. And some mods like SDO make it even better, both by fixing weapon progression to make more sense with NCTH and modifying the NCTH itself.

And that is perfectly fine. The whole point of a modable project like this is that everyone can adjust the game to his taste. But the whole idea of NCTH was to move away from that kind of super gamey gameplay. For some weird reason, in reality, modern armies don't just throw away their assault rifles and equip everybody with WW1 bolt action rifles and go around headshotting everyone. Instead, NCTH tries to be more "realistic", making volume of fire more important and strictly better than super precise single shots. Just like it has been in real life for quite some time. It wasn't always super succesful at that, but newer versions do it pretty fine. And some mods like SDO make it even better, both by fixing weapon progression to make more sense with NCTH and modifying the NCTH itself.

Armies dont throw away their ARs because they allow everybody to get a kill every 200-400(?) rounds,
(so compared to real numbers a crappy mrk 60 merc is already a good shot,
and realistic ammo/kill ratio would probably make JA2 weapons unuseable before anybody dies, how cool would that be irl!)
while only a few people are able to combine the vectors of target&projectile in their head
and also coordinate body&tool so that both meet at the desired spot.
Besides JA2 was imo not designed as an army vs army game, its more guerilla warfare.

Armies dont throw away their ARs because they allow everybody to get a kill every 200-400(?) rounds,
(so compared to real numbers a crappy mrk 60 merc is already a good shot,
and realistic ammo/kill ratio would probably make JA2 weapons unuseable before anybody dies, how cool would that be irl!)
while only a few people are able to combine the vectors of target&projectile in their head
and also coordinate body&tool so that both meet at the desired spot.
Besides JA2 was imo not designed as an army vs army game, its more guerilla warfare.

Ah yes, sorry, guerrilas all over the world are throwing their AKs to the garbage because Mosin Nagant with a PEM scope is a weapon of mass destruction and AK is basically a club that can be used to make some noise that might scare and suppress people at distance. Just like in AFS/UC and OCTH

It's ok. You like OCTH and want NCTH to be like it. As mentioned, there are mods that do it, there are ways to do it yourself if you want to, or you can, you know, use OCTH, it's not like it is gone. But let's not pretend that it makes any sense NCTH is goint in the other direction by design, and complaining about it misses the point completely.

Pls read my 1st message in this thread, while i like both its not about N vs O -cth
but the placement of the ncth/octh switch, (so it was somewhat off topic;)
and add to that the switches for iron man and interrupt system(even more ot!)
which both also appear(IM 2 and IS 3 campaigns) to have no negative effect on the game when switched on the fly.

Pls read my 1st message in this thread, while i like both its not about N vs O -cth
but the placement of the ncth/octh switch, (so it was somewhat off topic;)
and add to that the switches for iron man and interrupt system(even more ot!)
which both also appear(IM 2 and IS 3 campaigns) to have no negative effect on the game when switched on the fly.

And that is also perfectly fine, I'm always for more options, when possible, but if the guys actually working on it don't think so, oh well...

I, kinda, "took exception" to calling some really "bad" NCTH implementations good (which doesn't really mean that it is a bad CTH system in itself, just that making NCTH work, more or less, like OCTH is not a good NCTH implementaion). SDO is a good NCTH implementaion, it makes NCTH work better, while maintaing the goals of NCTH (making shooting work more in line with reality, avoiding headshot game, increasing the number of shots needed per hit, making suppresion important, and so on...), AFS/UC is, at this point, more of a OCTH pretending to be NCTH which is, as I said, perfectly fine. But calling it a good NCTH system is completely missing the point of NCTH.

While I like the concept of NCTH and its higher reliance on volume of fire, I'm struggling quite a bit with it (Experienced difficulty). I fear that for the sake of balancing later gameplay, the result is making the already challenging early game even harder.

Your mercs are generally outnumbered, and therefore the requirement for higher volume of fire plays in the enemy's favour when they need such benefit the least, when everyone has nothing but pistols. I remember the need to close the range early on, from my days of playing 1.13 years ago (version 3000-something, I think), but now even night fights are troublesome in a way I don't remember them being before.

I often find myself at max range (12+ tiles) and unable to get closer to get a better shot without massively exposing my guys, to the point day or night makes little difference because I'm already spotted at that distance even without NVGs. In that situation, the enemy can easily afford taking pot shots until someone takes a bad hit. I can't. Cover seems more fickle than ever, feeling somewhat ineffective unless the merc is in a perfect position against a single enemy. Against 2-3, the "danger view" commonly becomes red all over unless the character falls back considerably, only to repeat the same situation at a later time.

The only times I can operate with an acceptable degree of effectiveness is basically when I have tools to break line of sight, like buildings or very dense cover (thick woods). This gives way to boring exploitative tactics, like the classic "hunker down in a shack and shoot them down one by one as they walk through the door". Most wilderness fights lack such, so they're a pain.

Overall, it just doesn't feel fun, between frustrating straight fights with uncomfortable levels of savescumming, and dull exploits.

So, ranting aside, what am I doing wrong? How can I alleviate these issues without turning the later game into a cakewalk? That's sort of what happened with the old system.

I haven't played in a long time but last time I played JA2 1.13 I used a modification for enemy gear which gives them more old rifles, shotguns and SMGs from the start. Once I was through the first fight I had a nice assortment of starter weapons. My IMP had good equipment from the start because IMPs get trait specific weapons which helped a lot. Of course one can always hire mercs with better equipment to have an easier start but that usually means less mercs because of financial restrictions. Also I always try to scavenge some stuff from wilderness sectors and farms before going for a town.

Well, now that is a problem... for some reason, the game is still using the old way of weapon progression where first everyone is fighting with sticks and stones, and then at some point someone invents a pistol and so on while that kind of progression makes some kind of sense with OCTH where weapon range is THE defining (could even be called sole important) weapon stat, but it makes no sense whatsoever with NCTH. In NCTH, pistols should never be first choice weapon (like they are not in reality, for no military or paramilitary organization).

It is also kinda problematic, as it hasn't been updated for quite some time and will have problems with newer versions of 1.13, but is perfectly usable with, for example, 7609 version (which has the possible advantage of Sevenfm's modifications being available, http://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=msg&th=21864&start=0& ). Again, I have a, for personal use, kinda up to date "lite" version (lite as I removed most of the stuff that wasn't really tied to weapon progression/performance, like changes to mercs, vehicles and so on, to make it easier to keep it updated with changes), if someone wants it

I haven't played in a long time but last time I played JA2 1.13 I used a modification for enemy gear which gives them more old rifles, shotguns and SMGs from the start. Once I was through the first fight I had a nice assortment of starter weapons. My IMP had good equipment from the start because IMPs get trait specific weapons which helped a lot. Of course one can always hire mercs with better equipment to have an easier start but that usually means less mercs because of financial restrictions. Also I always try to scavenge some stuff from wilderness sectors and farms before going for a town.

Hmm, that's interesting. Would that require detailed tweaking or would bumping up REGULAR_EQUIPMENT_QUALITY_MODIFIER and perhaps ADMIN_EQUIPMENT_QUALITY_MODIFIER a couple of points do? Don't know about ELITE_EQUIPMENT_QUALITY_MODIFIER, since it seems that gets a bonus by default.

How do enemy loadouts work for the three enemy levels by default? Does enemy loadout generate when you first encounter a team of goons, or earlier?

Gotta check out those mods, LatZee. Thank you for your comments! The problem with mods is usually compatibility with the latest builds, but we'll see.

What'd you guys say is the right Bobby Ray's quality setting using Lev's progression? The standard x2 seems insufficient to keep up with the modified enemy progress. I don't think Lev modded BR. The default's supposed to represent one step ahead of that, from the looks of it.

Can the setting be changed mid-game? I'm several days into my current playthrough.

Also, I've taken a peek into SDO's CTHConstants.ini, and there are substantial differences compared to the latest unstable build (8511). I could spot the following at first glance if I'm reading correctly:

*This is a tricky one for me: normally, shooting at someone from the side shouldn't make much of a difference. But if the target's prone and the shooter's somewhat close, the impact should be huge.

I'm sure there are finer changes, but I think the major effect of the aforementioned tweaks is that the AI will try and shoot from much farther away (175% max range instead of 140%) and with harsher effects on its own accuracy, between the altered general accuracy drop, gravity and deviation beyond max range.

This can be assumed to result in a lot of wasted time and ammo on the enemy's part. Certainly an easier time for my mercs and I, to some extent: it'd help entertain Deidranna's goons when spotted from afar. Close quarters combat wouldn't change much, it seems, other than encouraging the player to stay within effective range. Worth a try, overall.

BR progress cannot be changed mid game unless you use a debugger. I'm always playing with BR on 2 for quality and quantity. Check Tony for better stuff or get it from enemies/elites. If BR had all the good stuff too early it would be boring for me because I like to find better stuff after fights. These are the "Hey! Nice stuff!" moments.
I also leave "progress speed of item choices" at "normal".

BR progress cannot be changed mid game unless you use a debugger. I'm always playing with BR on 2 for quality and quantity. Check Tony for better stuff or get it from enemies/elites. If BR had all the good stuff too early it would be boring for me because I like to find better stuff after fights. These are the "Hey! Nice stuff!" moments.
I also leave "progress speed of item choices" at "normal".

Yeah, but I mean to keep it on par with Lev's progression mod, since otherwise early on BR stocks pistols and a couple of SMGs at best, while there would be early rifles around "in the wild".

Perhaps quality 3 or 4 would do? I'm not sure what each level comprises.

I'm sure there are finer changes, but I think the major effect of the aforementioned tweaks is that the AI will try and shoot from much farther away (175% max range instead of 140%) and with harsher effects on its own accuracy, between the altered general accuracy drop, gravity and deviation beyond max range.

This can be assumed to result in a lot of wasted time and ammo on the enemy's part. Certainly an easier time for my mercs and I, to some extent: it'd help entertain Deidranna's goons when spotted from afar. Close quarters combat wouldn't change much, it seems, other than encouraging the player to stay within effective range. Worth a try, overall.

SDO makes larger general changes, so it can't be judged only on CHTConstants.

First thing, it is a complete weapon progression rebalance. There are smgs and rifles available from coolness 1. Most mercs (and enemies) get them by default. There are even early game machine guns (like BAR) which can be acquired very early (from day 1 at Tony with a bit of luck). Also, shotguns are more useful, bordering on even overpowered with the amount of suppression the buckshot causes

It uses longer base view range, which creates situations where visual acquisition range is not necessarily conductive to immediate shooting. So combat gets less "plop down to the ground and shoot at everything you see as soon as you see it". Early on, you'll generally have to get a bit closer or shoot just for suppression. Sometimes, if there is not a good way to flank/advance, you might end up in a bit of a stalemate, where you can only exchange inefficient fire with the enemy, which is basically the way that combat in open spaces looks in reality those changes in CTHConstants are to encourage AI to shoot from those distances which are a bit longer than the vanilla 1.13.

Since it is expected that you'll waste more ammo, it is more readily available, both in drops and from Tony.

Next big change (which is, mechanically, horribly gamey, but useful) is that lower magnification scopes (up to 5x or so) dont give vision range bonuses. This more or less fixes the biggest JA2 problem nowadays, that AI is bad at using scopes, and so, once you get them, the game kinda degenerates into you shooting at them and they never even seeing you. So, as the scopes are less gamebreaking, they are much more available, so 3x rifle scopes or the old 4x scopes (like no.32 or PEM) are very easily obtainable from the start, which helps with NCTH,

Now, a bad thing (if you are used to the "normal" 1.13) is that even with a scope, rifles are still relatively bad. Not useless. But relatively bad. In vanilla 1.13 or something like AFS, if you make, for example, a sniper expert IMP and and get him something like M1 carbine with No.32 scope, they become one man army (or at least they would, if M1 carbine wasn't kinda unreasonably bad in vanilla 1.13 having same range as the Thompson or 9mm carbines, which is not very realistic ). Quite literally. In SDO, someone like that is going to be useful because he can kinda break those stalemate situations, by getting a hit every now and then at those larger distances, but they will miss a lot. Generally the hit rates are lower, and that means that it can be dangerous getting caught with a slow firing weapon if enemies do get closer. Especially so if you use some kind of scope that blocks iron sights as that means you'll basically never hit anyone if they get too close. Meaning, having some kind of quicker sidearm (a pistol, machine pistol or smaller smg or even a small shotgun) is absolutely necessary.

It also means that rifles are horrible weapons for unskilled mercs. So if you want your Ira, MD or Barry to be kinda useful, it is better to give them something that can at least be useful even if they never hit anything, but still do a bit of suppression. Or score a lucky hit simply through the increased volume of fire.

There are a lot more changes, it is generally harder to carry around lots of stuff and so on and on. It certainly takes some time to get used to all the changes (or revert some of them if you don't like them). And of course, it is not for everyone. It's perfectly reasonable not to like it. It would be very boring if everyone liked the same things

Which bits of SDO are you keeping in order to achieve compatibility with the latest dev builds, LatZee?

Well, the really necessary part is updating AmmoTypes.xml or else weapons do practically no damage. Besides that, I add items that come with new features (so, anti air missiles, bear traps, riot shields and stuff like that), keep JA2_Options and Skills_Settings.xml updated, and all the rest I have either removed, as things like Merc changes I consider more of Strohmann's preferance than the core part of SDO, or are not all that super important (like adjusting new merchants a bit and non essential stuff like that).

As I said, I do it for personal use, seeing as I did kick out or change some things, wouldn't really want to distribute it as I don't know whether Strohmann would be happy with it, but I can put it up somewhere if you want to give it a try, as it would be stupid for you to have to do some of the drudge work updating it again

I can put it up somewhere if you want to give it a try, as it would be stupid for you to have to do some of the drudge work updating it again

Go ahead! It's not necessarily my intent to reproduce SDO itself, but I'll see if I can make some sense of it and extract further things of interest. I've modded a number of other games, but haven't tinkered much with JA2 1.13.